Wild because games in the $20-$40 range have been killing it the last couple years.

Maybe instead of charging more, big developers could spend less on overhead and bureaucracy. Palworld is made by 4 guys and has sold more in a few weeks than most AAA releases last year. Hifi Rush, cyberfunk bomb rush, subnautica if you want examples out of early access.

Maybe instead of gamers getting used to higher prices, game publishers should get used to lower sales until they wise the fuck up.

Problem is these aren't great games but cash grabs with day one dlcs and micro transactions. And they keep asking for more.

Game development isn't as expensive as made out, legal costs and marketing. But mostly greed and share holders are main issues in gaming right now

I’d happily pay $80 for a great game that didn’t need to rely on microtransactions to sustain itself

I'd be fine with this, but... They'd just add the mtx anyway, because why not? Gotta make ALL the money, not just a lot of money.

I do think that eventually something’s got to give and people will need to accept prices higher than $60 or stop complaining about DLC.

While I do agree in the broader sense that game prices haven't tracked inflation, and that I think that you are correct that some people aren't taking that into consideration, I'd also point out that there are also some other options (which people may or may not want).

• Games could become lower-budget. It might be that people just don't want to buy games that cost what they used to in real terms. That's not impossible. I mean, you can make games on a smaller budget that are still fun. It won't have the huge content budget, and there are some things that you can't do, but some that you can. I like a number of games that have much smaller content budget than triple-A titles.

• Games could just rely more on having more sales. The video game market is larger than it once was. The downside, the tradeoff there, is that if you have to make mass-market games, then you can't make games that address particular niche interests.

EDIT: I'm also really disappointed that people are downvoting your comment. There's nothing there that's impolite, and even if they don't want to pay $80, someone else saying that they would should not be downvoted. We've had games that span a range of prices for a long time.

Hades, Risk of Rain, Captain of Industry, Against the Storm.

Plenty of great games are under 40$. They just don't get made by large companies with shareholders and executive and marketing overheads.

Weak argument.

Overall game development is actually easier these days.